Apple iPhone 4 vs the Blackberry Torch 9800 – Review

We have had our limited exposure to both of these super smartphones that are all set to be amongst the bestsellers in 2010. Blackberry is all set to go on sale with the torch on 12th August and iPhone 4 has already sold millions. RIM has pitched the Torch as its best device ever and the design sure reminds us of the Palm Pre or the O2 XDA IIs. A touchscreen with a slide down keyboard can be a killer combination, bringing the best of both worlds for the user. While we still find the Blackbery Bold as a good competitor, lets see..

how does the Blackberry Torch 9800 stack up against the iPhone 4?The iPhone 4 is rated as the best smartphone our there. One of the most advanced mobile platforms iOS combined with a hardware that has a lot of firsts to its name like the Retina display and glass design. On the other hand the Blackberry brings a physical keyboard to touchsceen and a all new OS version 6 called Blackberry 6. In terms of raw horse power the iPhone beats the BB easily with a 1GHz process versus the 624MHz on the Blackberry. RAM matches up at 512MB but the performance doesnt. The touchscreen response and operations on the Blackberry aren’t really upto the mark. Certainly not there when you see any of the latest Android/BADA OS phones.

Torch packs in a 4GB on-board memory and allows Micro SD card expansion. The display is 3.2″ capacitive with a resolution of 480×360. This is modest as compared the iPhone 4 retina which is 960×640 and 3.5″. However RIM does bring in multitouch to the Torch and some may like the flexibility of having a external MicroSD card option.

Blackberry has looked to go head-on with the web browsing issue and adopted a webkit based browser here. While sites load well on this, the responsiveness (tap to zoom, scrolling) isn’t quite smooth and even the older generations of the iPhone does better. The only place where perhaps the Blackberry scores is getting its existing userbase to a touchscreen while still holding them with all the goodness of a traditional blackberry. Ofcourse the OS 6 is pretty neat and brings some welcome changes to the UI / menus (looks partly inspired by Android) and manages to please us.

So if you are a consumer and looking for a smartphone out there, you might not consider the Blackberry Torch. But if you are a Blackberry loyalyst, this perhaps is the best Blackberry out there in the market – just don’t bother to compare its poweress as a smartphone with the latest iPhone / Androids 🙂

Specs Fight: iPhone 4 vs Blackberry Torch 9800